Good evening! Today is December 5th 2016 our Monday night class. Also hello to those who are listening by way of the Internet. Today we’re going to have a class that’s going to be a little bit different. It is going to be one that’s going to check on one particular aspect of the practice of Chan and dealing with one of the Six Paramitas or Perfected Practices. This particular part of the practice is Patience (ksanti). It’s a very interesting subject and one that we all need sometimes.

As I was beginning to prepare for this class, I started looking more into patience, contemplating patience, as to what this patience really mean in this context of the Dharma practice. So what I want you to do is to take some time right now, and those you are listening by way of the Internet as well, take time to reflect at this moment on what you think patience means. Take some time…

(Group contemplating on “patience”…)

Again we’re contemplating what patience means… What does it mean to you?

2-3 minutes later, Bell: Ding!

Okay, you had an opportunity to think a little bit about patience. You contemplated it. What do you think it means? What is patience? How would you define it? Let’s start from the back.

Student: I don’t have a definition but I had some thoughts. For me and my practice, I have a problem getting aggravated and my mind is clouded, or if I’m confused or something like that, then patience is letting go that this will pass eventually. It’s fine that my mind is clouded now and I can only get aggravated if my mind is not quiet.

Next student: On a few occasions, I’m kind of oscillated the same way as Dan that like on a long term that you need to wait. You can’t expect these things to happen right away. You give it some time. Like right now, I have to wait for something to happen. It’s a different way of looking at it.

Next student: I look at it a differently for some reason today. Patience almost seems like a pre-attachment, that if you’re waiting for something, or if you wait for something to, or not to, it’s pre-attachment. So patience actually would be just letting it flow and letting it be. You’re attaching to something either behind you or in front of you. Patience wouldn’t be a good practice. Like in a situation that I’m going, I have to be patient or my mind is going to get clouded, rather than being in this moment where it always is.

Gilbert: Would that be patience or not patience?

Same student: It would be neither, or.

Gilbert: Alright! This is a tricky question okay, as to what is patience.

Next student: I think it is knowing things will happen in the right time, during their own right time. When things are right for it to happen, it will happen. My mind could not be cloudy, won’t be cloudy. That’s patience.

Next student: For me, it starts by trying to be aware of not putting the ego or the self, first. It’s so I can wait for the awareness of the situation to develop so that the ego does not cloud and hurry up my action.

Gilbert: The patience of Job.

Next student: To me, it’s kind of like an appreciation especially if I don’t like it. (Laughs…)

Next student: Feeling patience is like letting go of things. Like Bill said, letting things happen naturally, as they happen.

Gilbert: What do you let go of?

Same student: Letting go of likes and dislikes, even thoughts of likes and dislikes.

Gilbert: Anything else?

Same student: The ego.

Gilbert: The ego, okay.

Next student: Patience is faith in Buddha-nature. When I am working with somebody else, it’s faith in their Buddha-nature, or my Buddha-nature. It is the Wu-wei of non-doing, not attaching and rushing to an action. It’s following function with non-doing. I’ve been working on this apparent difference or distance between Bodhichitta. I vow to deliver innumerable sentient beings and then on the other side, there is Buddha-nature that infuses self and other, which is without separation originally, so no sentient beings to deliver. I vow to deliver innumerable sentient beings. Patience is on the end of “no sentient beings to deliver.” Nothing to do.

Gilbert: It’s interesting because I read somewhere [in terms of the practice] that we have kind of …. I don’t think it’s two-fold but it is two sides of the same coin, this idea of delivering innumerable sentient beings, and the other is attaining supreme enlightenment. But in fact, they’re the same because when we make the vow “I vow to deliver innumerable sentient beings” or a Bodhisattva vow “I vow to deliver all sentient beings before I’m delivered.” It’s the same coin. Because in order for that to happen for the enlightenment of that Bodhisattva, all sentient beings would have to be delivered. So they are the same thing and I think that’s what you’re kind of looking at. It’s kind of like flipping this coin and whichever way you flip it, there’s kind of a resonance of some truths there. You keep working that, keep looking that and working that in terms of that.

It’s very interesting because what you didn’t say today, and perhaps some of the other people who comes to the class, they might as well say that patience is when people really ticks me off, or patience is when this happens or that happens. But you actually went to the issue of what patience is with respect to the practice. That’s really important because that means you’ve been paying attention. It means that you’re not dealing with things on the superficial level in terms of [you know], “When I get mad, I need to do this, and this, and this!”

As I was preparing for this class, I read many articles about what people thought is patience. And I go “Yes, this is this. Oh no, this is not correct,” in terms of how they were defining it. They’re trying to have the “I” to be patient. But it’s not that there’s an “I” that is patient. It’s kind of like what Wendy did in her kind of a curved ball approach of saying reversing it. I don’t know how that’s going to translate out in the text but the intention is looking at that there’s no such thing as patience because there’s no sentient being to have the patience. The idea of looking into patience and seeing this is very important.

Let me continue on a little bit in terms of this Paramita of patience. There is kind of an opening presentation that pertains to the Four Noble Truths and the idea of suffering. But in our Mahayana practice, we go beyond the idea of suffering. What does the Heart Sutra say?

Student: There is no suffering.

Gilbert: There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, and no path. It turns everything right-side up.

This is what you were attempting to do today in your definitions of patience. You weren’t taking the bait of saying “I need to be more patient!” You’re looking at it and going “There’s something more here; something that we need to deal with” in terms of looking at this where people are talking about “turning the mind’s eye inward” or “deep self-introspection,” or whatever. And then I look at it and go “There’s no direction, there’s no dimension there. There’s nothing there that we turn inward or outward, no inflow nor outflow. It is just all the same. As I’m reading my commentary from last week and trying to define this consciousness like a chamber. Maybe in unartfully (?)but still a little bit better so that there’s no idea as a view point, that there’s a direction in which one is looking. It is just this awareness of mind.

So let’s look at what they define it. Unfortunately my stuff is highlighted in yellow and this light in the room neutralizes yellow. This is from a commentary of Ksanti Paramita: Perfection of Patience, The Three Dimensions of Patience by Barbara O’Brien.

Ksanti means “unaffected by” or “able to withstand.”

When I read this, I was going “unaffected by and able to withstand,” it’s interesting because “able to withstand” doesn’t really apply. “Unaffected by” is also not quite right because the mind is functionally dynamic and it is engaged at all times in the present moment. The only thing that is not affected by, is that it was already perfected, which is mind itself. So when we look at this and we try to understand patience, what needs to be present then?

Student: Right View.

Gilbert: Right View, wisdom; it’s the same thing.

It’s there, this wisdom, one of the other Paramitas. It is that we see the things but it is not affected. Why is it not affected? Because there’s no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, and no path. And when we see things in this way, it’s clear. That patience, it’s just like you’re saying in a way, when it’s reversed – it’s upside-down. When you’re looking at it from the person that’s affected, then there’s patience. When one utilizes right view and the practice has been perfected, then there is nothing to be effected. It’s not affected. In fact there’s nothing there and this idea is able to withstand. It’s not really withstanding and enduring like “I can do this!” Or “I can eat bitter!” It is able to withstand illusion and it is able to see through illusion. As it sees it in this way, what I’m approaching this is from the idea of transcendent wisdom rather than just simply looking at it from the viewpoint of wisdom itself saying “Don’t be affected by this! Don’t do this!” When we look at it from right view, we see it right away – there is no suffering. We create that.

When we practice patience in the right way, it is this ability to put aside this kind of illusory clinging but we get there from right view. A lot of what I’ve read about patience had to do with “I’ve got to put down this discrimination and that discrimination, and this, and this.” And I’m going “Why? You just have to see it from where it comes from.” You have to see moment-to-moment. What is that? Moment-to-moment – Paticcasamuppada – causes and conditions never fail. So you see that clearly.

And if you see it very clearly in this way and you continue to practice moment-to-moment, then you are not affected by it. You’re not attached to it. There’s nothing that you have to withstand. You just see mind as it is – mind unfolding in accordance with causes that present the present conditions. And as mind is seen in this way, it’s a self-cleaning oven. It cleans off all of what the ancients call “dross” from [let’s say] if you’re working on silver. There’s all this dross that’s there. It cleans it off in a simple way, as realizing that fundamentally, it’s all part of all these. It’s all part of silver and it doesn’t matter whether it’s the silver or the dross. They are mind. When we see it in this way, we understand the dross can be cast off. But it isn’t that it’s eliminated, it is just simply perfected – that we see in that moment how things are happening.

So if you’re waiting for things to get better, you have to see: one, everything is impermanent and there is causes and conditions, and two, that whatever happens in the future is governed by what is happening in the present. As you see this in this way, you begin to have faith that it works in this way. You have faith and that patience will naturally arise.

Have you tried to make yourself patient? Have you tried to do that? It doesn’t work, right? All you have to do is ask a nine-year-old to be patient for Christmas. (Laughs…) They can’t do it that way. I was looking back at my life in terms of things that I was impatient about. There’s so many different types of things and they all have to do with the ego and you realize that these things are that way.

But as I’ve been practicing lately, moment-to-moment seeing Paticcasamuppada and everything that happens, there’s this incredible patience there. It doesn’t matter if the person in front of you is an old lady and she just drops all her coins on the counter to buy something, and she was moving them one by one with her finger “1, 2, 3.” It doesn’t matter! You just see things. There is almost a bit of humor there, in terms of how you would have reacted before.

This is kind of interesting because there’s this Nun, Pema Chodron, and she was talking about this humorous aspect and I understood that because it was looking at it and going “I don’t have to get crazy in this moment; I don’t have to worry about that! If the line is long, the line is long. It’s going to be the way it is. Whatever is coming, it’s coming. I’m patient and I will deal with it.” Patience goes towards the expectation of something bad to happen, or expectation of something good to happen. If we just see this and this is the way life is, then we’re liberated from that. A lot of times, people are so worried about what is going to happen next in their life. They really fear that and they create a stronger ego from all of that.

I’m going to go right now to some of what Pema Chodron says in her commentary: The Answer to Anger and Aggression is Patience, March 1, 2005. (I hope I didn’t mispronounce her name too bad). She is a Western nun. She has some very interesting kind of family fireside chat, kind of a way of talking about things. I think this is good because of the fact that it appeals more to Westerners in terms of that. She said:

I thought, if patience is the antidote to aggression, maybe I’ll just try that. In the process, I learned about what patient is and about what it isn’t. I would like to share with you what I’ve learned, to encourage you to find out for yourself how patience works with aggression.

She talks about how it works with aggression, but I really don’t want to concentrate on that where using patience to mean putting down anger.

Student: Not my parent but being a parent and having to discipline your child and so forth. What I found was wisdom is the best antidote to anger and from wisdom, patience comes. Rather than saying “I need to be patient,” no! First, applying wisdom works better than trying to get to patience. Patience is then born from wisdom.

Gilbert: Yes, this is kind of like what this whole thing is about, is this right view patience. It’s a little bit different instead of trying to calm aggression with patience. One is using insight to look into it. Patience is actually the end result, not the pill that one takes. That’s why I said “Have you ever tried to be patient?” If you just go “Be patient! Be patient! Be patient!” Try to say that to a kid; “But Mom! But Mom! But Mom!” you know. And you say “Be patient! Be patient! Be patient!” They’re like right on you in terms of doing that.

One comedian was saying about kids, that they’re so wonderful. They’d go “Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?” you know 15,000 times a day. And if you aren’t a practitioner, you definitely will try your patience with that. But in any case, let’s go on to this one. It says:

With your words or your actions, in order to escape the pain of aggression, you create more aggression and pain.

So if you’re doing things and you buy in to something like that, you create more.

At that point, patience means getting smart:…

To me, I put in the note “Patience means right view” or wisdom.

…you stop and wait. You also have to shut up, because if you say anything it’s going to come out aggressive, even if you say “I love you.”

And that’s ego. You just don’t attach to the ego. You illuminate the ego and by illuminating the ego, patience will come. It’s not the other way around. It’s very very important because this is what the Heart Sutra was all about, flipping everything right-side up and seeing things from this view point of right view rather than trying to suppress things and calling it patience. “I have to be more patient; I have to be more patient!” No, you have to be more insightful. You have to see what is happening moment-to-moment-to-moment. That is why it’s a Paramita – perfected practice. It is a perfected practice. It’s not something you practice. It all comes in to play with all the other Paramitas. They are all connected, especially wisdom. But what you’re doing is you’re using this practice to cultivate the patience.

She was talking about this experience she had with one friend of hers who called up in the middle of the night because she was not happy with him. When she called up she said:

No matter what’s coming out of your mouth, it’s like you’re sitting on top of a keg of dynamite, and it’s vibrating.

I think what she says in terms of vibrating is very important because what it’s doing is it’s resonating with habitual tendencies of the self and the self is there going “I, I, I, I, I, I want this!” and it’s seeing things in a very selfish manner in terms of that.

Patience has a lot to do with getting smart at that point and just waiting: not speaking, not saying anything. On the other hand, it means to be completely and totally honest with yourself about the fact that you’re furious.

More than rather to see it in this way that you’re furious, I said “It’s more to see what is arising.” If you practice from the other way, you’re solidifying the self. You’re saying “I’m angry!” But what you have to do is you have to see that “I” is arising at that moment. Not “I” but your emotion is arising, which you call “I.” So you have to flip it over and say “There’s an emotion arising! I do not claim it for myself! I’m using the right view to illuminate [at this moment] this emotion is arising!” And you, by illuminating it, neutralize it.

Trust me, it works! It works! But you have to practice moment-to-moment-to-moment. And when you practice moment-to-moment, there’s no “I” there. Nothing to hang on there. Nothing to be aggressive, nothing to be angry, nothing to be jealous, nothing to crave, nothing to discriminate. Discrimination arises, it’s illuminated; neutralized. Anger arises, it’s neutralized. It’s neutralized by wisdom. It’s neutralized by right view. What is arising in this moment, there’s not one bit of “I” there! It’s just habitual tendencies. We have so gotten attached to these habitual tendencies, we create this illusory “I” instead of just letting mind function unobstructed.

But when we use right view, we’re using mind. Not bad! We’re using mind to look into this. Where is the self? Only self-nature of mind that’s there. It has nothing to do with what you call your “self” or what other people call.

You’re not suppressing anything – patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself.

Here, I beg to differ with her again. You aren’t suppressing anything, you’re illuminating it, and you’re illuminating the illusory self. If you practice it the other way, then it’s difficult to utilize that because you’re trying to generate patience rather than using the wisdom to come from the right end [if you could say it that way].

Student: One other thing that I find useful is when there’s anger, it is coming from a resistance to what is. To really look at the anger, to see what the resistance is and what is being resisted to see where that anger is coming from. That also dissipates, the anger.

Gilbert: This is illuminating the mind as long as the self is not present. You have to be careful that self doesn’t come around the side and hang onto awareness and say “Yeah, you see that over there? That’s bad! We’re good!” When we see it in the correct way, little by little that will be clearer and clearer. It means there’s levels of clarity.

And when you get to looking at it even deeper and deeper, there’s an incredible liberation in the present moment, an incredible liberation. It doesn’t mean that you’re not [you know] go into problems, or a policeman isn’t going to give you a ticket, or whatever else happens in your life. But you can deal with it. You can go “Okay, fine. The reason I got a ticket is because I was going fast.”

Well, how are you going to explain that you got a ticket?

Well, you were going faster than 65 on the freeway and he happen to be there. Causes and conditions, boom! You got a ticket.

But then you go “I can’t believe that Cop gave me a ticket, (Laughs…) I was only doing 97, but I was only passing a car.” (Laughs…) And you rationalize everything as to why you shouldn’t have gotten that ticket.

One of the things that she said and she said it a little bit wrong, [to me], is she said you have to be honest with yourself. No, you have to be honest to see self. Self is on the other side. It’s the numerator, not the denominator. It’s part of phenomena. And when one uses right view to see it in this way, rapidly one can develop patience. It’s just absolutely amazing really this patience. When you see the people always going and they’re patting their legs, and they’re doing things and so nervous, and they’re looking at the clock and then they look at their wrist watch, and they look at the clock you know. They’re so nervous all the time and they never can find peace.

But if you’re there and you’re in the present moment, there’s no space, no time. You’re aware ultimately of that. Even though you’re dealing in apparent reality, there’s this absolute reality that is there. That’s mind! In this way, one can transcend all of these suffering because we see things clearly. That transcendence is the perfect patience. And then she said:

You don’t react, even though inside you’re reacting. You let the words go and just be there.

Here again it’s a little bit not quite right where she’s saying that inside you’re reacting. Inside you should be illuminated. Inside you’re illuminated and the emotion is arising quite clearly. The emotion is arising. You can feel it coming up but when you illuminate, it neutralizes it and you disengage. Until you get to a perfected practice, patience! Patience! So patient. That’s why I mentioned the notations of Job. You have this Biblical type of patience that’s there and you can hang in there. Why? It’s faith. You have faith and you see that it works in this way. And then one day, patience is just there. Not bad! But you’re not bad! Mind is there but you’re not. Then she says that you let go and just be there. This part is correct, in the present moment. Not “you,” mind! There’s no “you” there to be. It’s just mind.

This suggests the fearlessness that goes with patience. If you practice the kind of patience that leads to de-escalation of aggression and cessation of suffering, you will be cultivating enormous courage.

It is the fearlessness that comes from seeing things as they are – right view. That’s where you get the fearlessness. You cannot develop a fearlessness [you know] where you get some kind of a badge like the Cowardly Lion. It doesn’t work that way. There is no Cowardly Lion there. Fearlessness is what they talk about in the Tathagatagarbha, the Lion’s Roar. The Lion’s Roar that is there, or the Diamond Cutter Sutra that cuts through all the illusions. There is fearlessness in that because it’s right view. We see things as they are, as they are happening in that moment, understanding that there’s a cause to it, and we’re clear about the conditions that are arising, and we’re clear that they arise in mind. They are created in mind. That’s the fearlessness there because that develops the patience.

Little by little, the more we practice, the more we practice, the more we practice, all of these will be resolved. And as you begin to practice, the practice gets better and you’ll encounter very slight instances of liberation, of freedom and ease of body and mind. This is something that you use. This is called “realized faith” that you use to go deeper into it instead of saying “Oh, I got it! I got the magic ticket!” No, you really didn’t get it because there’s nobody to get it. You have to practice and you keep practicing, never looking ahead. You’re in this moment. The Buddha is in the present moment. As you’re looking there, that’s where the patience will come from.

When we human beings feel powerful energy, we tend to be extremely uncomfortable until things are resolved in some kind of secure and comforting way, either on the side of yes or no. Or the side of right or the side of wrong. Or the side of anything all that we can hold on to.

That is a definite recipe for suffering, anytime we think in this way. “You’re neither for nor against it;” this is what one Chan poem says.

But the practice we’re doing gives us nothing to hold on to.

Actually the teachings themselves give us nothing to hold on to. My note to that is “Don’t hold on to the teachings.” We transcend even the idea that the teachings are there. But nevertheless we use them until we realize don’t hold on to the teachings.

In working with patience and fearlessness, we learn to be patient with the fact that we’re human beings; that everyone who is born and dies from the beginning of time until the end of time, is naturally going to want some kind of resolution to this edgy, moody energy.

This again I think is buying in to the idea of self. I would not look at it in this way. I would say everything is mind. It doesn’t return to mind, it is mind. Everything, even discriminations are mind. Even foul thoughts are mind. There’s no place, no kind of like a basement in mind where all false thoughts or foul thoughts, profane thoughts are housed. They’re just simply in mind.

Patience is an enormously wonderful and supportive and even magical practice. It’s a way of completely changing the fundamental human habit of trying to resolve things by going either to the right or left, calling things right or calling things wrong. It’s the way to develop courage, the way to find out what life is really about.

Here I think she’s going to a more general audience so she’s not throwing them into the deep end. But in terms of looking at it, I would say it appears to be a magical practice but it’s the wondrous function of the mind. Not magical but it’s the wondrous function of how mind works. To somebody who is stuck with the self, it appears to be magical. But when it’s seeing in right view, it’s perfect! Clearly appearing and that there is no doubt there.

Patience is also not ignoring. In fact, patience and curiosity go together. You wonder. Who am I? Who am I at the level of my neurotic patterns? Who am I at the level beyond birth and death? If you wish to look into the nature of your own being, you need to be inquisitive. The path is a journey of investigation, beginning to look more deeply at what’s going on. The teachings give us a lot of suggestions about what we can look for, and the practices give us a lot of suggestions on how to look. Patience is an extremely helpful suggestion.

Again, I think he she is primarily right in what she’s saying. I think that patience is a product of one’s practice rather than the practice itself. It all fits together. I have a lot of respect for this person. I don’t want to make it seem like… I’m just trying to clarify things to a certain extent.

It requires enormous patience even to be curious enough to look, to investigate.

I think that this idea here is probably on the correct way in terms of saying that it requires this patience. It requires the right effort in terms of doing this. This virya, this effort that we make to look into it. And as a result of that investigation, comes patience. We have this diligence about what we’re doing. As we have this diligence in the present moment, patience is there simply as the product of the wisdom of looking into this, this introspection.

Student: It’s this silent in the Silent Illumination.

Gilbert: The silence is [you could say] the concentration of the practice and you use the effort. You’re right about that. This is where you practice. You understand you have to have this practice.

But at this point, these concepts are almost interchangeable in terms of virya and patience. And as we look at it, then that looking into it illuminates the mind. That illumination of the mind develops the patience. We see things that way. We see “that’s the way it is!” We understand “Okay, hey, I got an “F” on my test, because I didn’t study.” What did I expect, an “A?” So you look at things and you see them and in this, I think what Pema Chodron was saying [that is correct] is that “One has to be honest, brutally honest” and see things as the way they are.

Who you are in this moment is the product of what you’ve done in the past, what habitual tendencies you’ve succumbed to, and created the environment around in the way it is. But that’s the most wondrous thing about the practice of Chan, is that we create moment-to-moment-to-moment. And when we create moment-to-moment, we can have the patience that say “Okay, if I plant the seedling, I will watch it grow.” Have you ever planted a corn seed, or whatever and waited for it to grow? You don’t quite have patience when you’re a kid when you’re doing that. But there’s something wondrous about it. You can see that it’s taking root and it’s growing.

When you see this, you understand how it works, except for the fact that there’s nothing that’s growing. It’s already there. All you have to do is continue to practice and the realization that’s there is that there’s no Bodhi that grows, no wisdom that grows. It’s just the way mind works. And as one does it, that’s why they say that “It happens!” It’s not like you are putting coins in the slot machine and you’re hoping that it’s going to pay off. “Let it pay off, let it pay off, let it pay off!” It doesn’t work that way! All we do is keep doing the things that are necessary with our effort, clearly seeing what needs to be done. In this way, patience will come on its own, and it doesn’t come out of the slot machine.

If you’re looking for any kind of deliverance from a slot machine, I feel very sorry for you because you’re just going to keep putting coins in for this lifetime, for the next lifetime, and the lifetime after that. Except that maybe you may not have an arm to play the slot machine. You might have a paw, and not a father.

Student: It is very interesting the way you put it, the virya and patience. Often we think about patience as something very passive. The way you’re putting virya and illumination, that’s the components of patience.

Gilbert: Quite so. They’re components of each other. All of them they all fit together – the perfected practices. Until we see things in this way, clearly this is the way how we practice. I apologize, I didn’t hear the bell go off outside. I think we’re going to end there because I think that that’s a pretty clear way to finish this off in terms of it.

Student: I’d like to say that you’ve been hinting at Paticcasamuppada, fearlessness in experiencing Paticcasamuppada – that causes and conditions never fail – you’re here because of what happened before and that patience had so much to do with it.

Gilbert: Quite so until we realize there’s no “you” that’s scared in terms of how we see it. We practice in this way and I think that’s probably the most important part, is that we’re practitioners and we practice moment-to-moment.

Sitting on the cushion helps us because when we sit on the cushion, all we have to do is just take a rest and illuminate mind. We have a difficulty in that because we are engaged in mind and we take that engagement and mind to be illumination. And it is not. You are right that we need to have the silent part, the concentration of Samadhi there. But the illumination is something that happens via the right view. It’s not simply parking the mind somewhere, you know, kind of like an electric vehicle where you park it and you plug it in and get recharged, and you’re off and running again. You just, you see things as they really are, clearly happening. And there is an incredible power to that, an incredible liberation from that as well.